Places I Never Meant To Be

Places I Never Meant To Be

YA/adult short stories
"Harry Mazer on censorship
I struggle each day not to let the fear of the censor poison my
writing. When the censor rules, a dull sameness creeps into books.
Am I being too cautious, being too careful in what I choose to write
about, watching my language? It's this caution inside that I fear
more than the censors. If I can't write the book that I want to
write, what am I doing?"
In my eleven years on school committee I never had to
officially weigh in on a censorship attempt. I saw a neighboring
town grapple with the issue. A high school freshperson was assigned a
book that his patents considered inappropriate. He was offered an
alternate assignment. His parents pushed to get the book removed from
curriculum and school library. I think the school refused and the boy
was placed in a private school. I knew all the participants. I was
amazed by the amount of acrimony I saw, the with us or against us
mentality.
I read the book. If Veazie had had a high school I would have
argued in its favor. I can understand people making book decisions
for their own children. I steered mine from books that were thinly
veiled attempts to get them to buy name brand products. I see red,
however, when they try to decide what everyone's children must not
have access to, especially when they hadn't read a whole book, but
completely decontextualized "offensive" passages.
We tend to look at the effect books in question have on kids.
Sometimes we try to take a slightly wider perspective and include the
school and community. I had never seen anything on the effect of
censorship on authors until I read Places I Never Meant To Be edited
by Judy Blume. It's a collection of short stories by writers who are
no strangers to controversy.
The stories are little masterpieces in their own right. In
Walter Dean Myers' The Beast Is in the Labyrinth a college boy has to
deal with a sister dying of drug abuse when he goes home on vacations.
"I know it's too hard. It's too hard to see her wasted on the
bed. Everything that was to be known was crammed into the small space
between us. We've walked together into the maze of our lives. The
beast has come to the reunion."
Harry Mazer's You Come, Too, A-Ron deals with the plight of
harder-to-find-homes-for older kids. Aaron has escaped from a state
school with too few staff members to keep the place safe, determined
to never go back. But when he goes back to placement he unexpectedly
bonds with a little kid, Kenny. That changes a lot in Aaron's mind.
When Kenny gets placed in a home...
"...I remembered something else. There were phones at Oakmont.
If I was there, the kid could call me whenever he wanted.
On weekends I could go see Kenny. Oakmont ran a bus into the
city for kids visiting their families. I'd go see the kid. We'd go
to Bronx Park, walk over to the zoo...Me and the kid."
Susan Beth Pfeffer's Ashes strikes close to home for me. The
divorced parents of Ashes (Asleigh) are a lot like mine were with her
mom being practical and responsible and her dad being anything but.
Her dad wants her to hand over her mom's savings. He's in danger from
probably unsavory characters he owes money to.
"I stood over the teapot and stared at the money. Mom's
emergency money. Her earthquake money. Her Martian money. Ten
Andrew Jacksons stared right back at me. They offered me no advice on
what I should do."
In addition to the stories each writer discusses what censorship
has meant to his/her life and career. Some were quite surprised to
find their content deemed dangerous and objectionable. Many found
themselves conflicted, wanting to give young readers authentic
content, but realizing too much pushing the envelope could have their
work banned or never published. Some considered the effect of their
work and reactions to it on others. Katherine Patterson said.
"I know that when a book is challenged, I will not be the one
who suffers. It will be the teacher or librarian who is called upon
to defend what I have written who must stand in the line of fire.
They are true heroes to me--the guardians of the constitutional
freedoms which make this country great. I admire them more than I can
say. If we lose their witness, we will have lost democracy itself."
Walter Dean Myers put a name to a concept I only became aware of
a few years ago: censorship by ommission. Unbeknownst to me, authors
like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston had spoken of it. If you
look at books with black protagonists (of which there are far too few)
most are about the black experience, as opposed to black narrator as
everychild/teen as in Jaburi Jumps which we looked at recently.
"Limiting the ideas that will be published not only prevents the
propogation of these ideas, it also corrupts the development of the
writer. But censorship by ommission does one other thing: it keeps
the evils of censorship hidden not only from the general public but
from other black writers who might be attracted to literature if they
did not have to filter their thoughts solely through their racial
identity."
I see the same process at work when it comes to LGBTQ
literature. In either case narrowing the scope of minority portrayal
to identity while giving majority characters the full scope of human
experience has the effect of othering at a time when we are in
desperate need of solidarity.
About a year or so ago I woke from a sound sleep with the idea
that gender fluid kids need a series of the kind that are so popular
with their peers: the kind with a blend of words and graphic art. I
came up with a protagonist who learns that she is gender fluid/
nonconforming. However, this is in the context of a lot of major
stuff going on in her life. Her parents have divorced and her dad's
moved to Alaska with the new love of his life. Mazie and her mom have
to move from Boston to a conservative town in Maine and live with her
fundamentalist grandparents. In the first book she nearly loses her
cat who is one of the few links she has to her former life, as well as
being a beloved companion.
I have no delusions that the censors will be friends of mine.
In addition to those who who believe in only the binary, I suspect the
religious right and NRA won't be happy campers.
I know that this is an unusually long review. It also took me
an unusually long time to wrote. I do most reviews in one day. I
started this one on a Saturday and ended it on a Monday.
Places I Never Meant to Be is a must read for folks along the
age continuum who are concerned with the depth and authenticity of the
juvenile/YA reading experience or just enjoy a good banned book.
Read banned books in a spirit of thoughtful inquiry. With each
one try to figure out who is censoring what and why. This modest
questioning may give you surprising insights.
On a personal note, Penobscot County is looking like a winter picture
postcard. We had a snow storm last night. Eugene has been plowing
about ten hours now. Gotta love a weekend snow event when it's all
overtime.
Friday at UMaine we had the hunger banquet to raise awareness of
hunger around the world and in Maine. People were randomly assigned
to tables catered by different multicultural organizations. I was at
one of the Asian tables. We had bento boxes. I'd read about them so
I was really psyched. I did my part by participating in set up and
clean up.
A great big shout out goes out to Eugene and all the others who are
clearing the snow and everyone involved with the Hunger Banquet.
jules hathaway


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